


Parley

by AsimovSideburns



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 11:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20191489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsimovSideburns/pseuds/AsimovSideburns
Summary: This is kind of a weird piece I wrote inspired a headcanon jam I participated in in tumblr user tazdelightful's art stream, talking about why Merle is so insecure in his place on a team.





	Parley

It’s easy, leaving them. It’s easy because it doesn’t feel like leaving, it’s just… trying again. Every moment is, for him, simply the next moment after the last one, when for them he’s been gone so long.

Stay, they cry. We miss you. We need you.

It doesn’t feel like leaving, because he knows he’ll be back.

The first time he goes, it hurts. It burns, black fire inside, screaming raw until the very air evaporates from his lungs.

It hurts every time, actually.

He goes, and he goes, and he goes again. The first day back, the first hour, he goes again. Again and again and it hurts _every time_, but they need to know what the man can tell him, so he goes and he trades and he _hurts_.

Eventually, he waits. Spends his lives more carefully, waiting until the last days before he leaves. Sometimes he never leaves at all, their numbers too few to risk whittling them down further.

But staying hurts, too, sometimes.

He left too often, too soon, and he’s missed too much. They’ve all been gone, sometimes, they all have stories they don’t know and things they haven’t seen, but him most of all, and that hurts, too.

He was a part, and now he is, all too often… apart.

Staying, sometimes, hurts worse than fire.


End file.
